barr, or tina fey

The more I think about it, the more I wonder why McCain didn't just nominate Tina Fey as his VP. I suspect she's probably smarter than his actual choice and basically looks the same. Would have been that hard to get people not to notice the Governor of .. Alaska? That Canadian accent thing isn't that hard to do. I switch accents all the time, surely a trained comedian does accents, no? Plus she's basically the only funny part on SNL, when I've bothered to catch any of it. Wouldn't that have shook up Washington more than picking a theocrat in a dress?

I looked at the political compass today to see where Palin rated (Biden was a Dem candidate early on and was already a known quantity). To my alarm, I confirmed several things that I was already aware of.

1) McCain has himself been moving up the social chain (in the wrong direction as far as I'm concerned).
2) He's still not as high as Bush v2, Romney or Palin. (Romney is the top dog in that fight, though Palin is pretty close).
3) Obama sort of moved since Iowa. McCain really moved, but usually these people move toward the 'center' (ie, center of American politics). Apparently I really underestimated the need to mobilize the religious right in national politics. In which case, I've really underestimated the growing amount of such people in voter rolls (and may be fairly alarmed in about another decade if these trends continue). The pull of statist/free marketeers in America is incredibly high. That seems totally contradictory, but then Turkey did just have a party like that win their election.
4) I don't have a candidate. I've been concerned since Barr somehow got the Libertarian nomination, but after more closely looking at him specifically I have to wonder how the hell they did that. He's basically a slightly more socially liberal Republican and not a libertarian in any meaningful way. His position relative to McCain's starting point is striking.
5) For all the complaining people might do about Barr, if people actually noted most of his politics, there's not enough difference there to attract voters away from McCain. By contrast, Nader and the other real 'leftists' are out there to attract attention away from Obama (if that's possible). Only if McCain continues to tie himself further to this right-wing statism (ie, fascism) will Barr resume any significant appeal.

I don't really like that 'right-wingers' (ie, classical liberal/libertarians) don't have choices in this campaign at all (although fortunately Josef Stalin isn't running either, so there's always that). Yet somehow there are these significant differences between Obama and McCain that we're supposed to choose one of them? I think not. For all the blogs I've done on this, each has felt like I've had to boil the tea leaves in order to see which is which (reading them is just not satisfying). The closest people I've had in the game from an ideological perspective have been Paul and then to a lesser extent (much lesser), Obama. On most of the 'key' issues, say education, health care, national defense/foreign affairs, there's really not much of a gap. Even the current economic 'crisis' and oil et al, there's not much to speak of. These side factors like abortion and very, very slight differences in tax policy are about all there is. Whoopie.

I think the best option for me right now is to go around the day before the election and talk to people who are over 35, then write in the name of the most sensible person I meet (who is a legal citizen and not an ex-con, I'm not old enough yet to write myself in). Otherwise, give me a guy talking about crazy things in a serious manner any day of the week (Paul and his rally for the gold standard for example). At least it shakes things up and presents a real outsider perspective to most issues.

Based on Barr's website (which is hardly a reliable indicator of his policies I know)
Pros: budget hawk
for private/free market systems on health care
anti-kelo
against corn ethanol subsidies (or other energy subsidies, including the oil ones we currently have)
Against Iraq War and massive defense spending (world military presence still needed?, against who?)
Mediums: against PATRIOT act and FISA (now anyway, late to the party)
Against Dept of Education..but his educational plan is basically the return of the 500 Polish lords: return the power to local school boards. I'm not certain that parents know any better how to educate their children than the teacher's unions. And they for damn sure don't know how to tell whether their children are learning anything meaningful and potentially instructive for later use. But at least he's against NCLB and the bloated education budget.

Quite frankly the only way education will eventually be fixed is to focus it not on the demands of parents, but on the demands of students. And no, I don't mean students get to pick the erotic subjects that interest the typical teenager. I mean the individual student has more sway over what they get into and how involved they are in their own education. After elementary school, there's very little new information that couldn't be gleaned privately through a cultivated habit of self-directed learning. The involvement of parents is then to coach the child on how to approach these decisions and to either provide funds (through tax credits/scholarships) or to select an appropriate academy to help harness the natural academic gifts of an individual (should they have such).

:Opposes gun laws, but it's not clear whether he opposes them on some constitutional basis or because there's no need for them. I'd prefer that they pick a middle ground here, where guns can be controlled sometimes for specific reasons, but not for wide-spread bans. It's possible a handgun ban can have useful effects for example, but there are negative unintended consequences that can result as well (such as the potential need for armed resistance of a runaway national government, something that hasn't been seriously attempted in over a century)
: opposes affirmative action. There's economic basis for doing this, namely that it doesn't really work. The effective target for the bend back method is not race, but poverty. It's really poverty that reduces opportunity. Race is a visible reminder of the nature of who comprises the poor, but isn't necessarily the main factor of determinations of personal achievement. I would argue the relative poverty and, in particular, the relative poverty of educational resources from a young age usually brought about by poverty are a more significant problem that would go much further to aiding people of any race or distinguished subset of society. But there's still some positive externality to be raised by having a public means of achieving this and to distribute some levels of equal opportunity (and not equality of result). So long as there exists a public institution, there exists the need for that institution to distribute positive externalities on some level (education, roads, defense, fire/police, for examples). Some levels of social welfare or insurance can be considered in this category, but there is a careful balance needed between 'encouraging' idleness and providing genuine assistance.

Negatives:
Immigration policy is baloney. I'm tired of our country being run by xenophobes.

Marriage issue being left to states is inherently going to create some fuzzy issues. In particular, it might be possible for people to use the old 'bloody Kansas' self-determination system of Stephen Douglas to stack the ballots in different states. I can't see that playing out well and it does not adequately protect the rights of the individual. While I recognize that 'marriage' as a legal term should remain distinct from 'marriage' as a religious term, there's absolutely no legal reason for any state or local entity to enact laws which discriminate on the basis of these unions being homosexual. There are only discomforting personal reasons or religious animosity, neither of which is a necessary call to impose populist will against the rights of the individual.

Federal Reserve opposition. The fractional reserve system we have in place is at least marginally effective. The problems it has caused have generally been studied and learned from. The principle issue has been the lack of effective oversight (when needed) and the lack of effective economic policies by successive administrations, often countering the advice given by members of the Federal reserve or providing less than adequate free market conditions (such as creating artificial barriers to competition). This sort of thing, and the populist opposition to it, goes back all the way to Jefferson, certainly to Andrew Jackson. I don't get it coming from a party of economists however. I'll have to get around to reading Hayek.